Johann Melchior Füssli
Baroque scientific book illustrator
Johann Melchior Füssli was a Swiss draftsman, engraver and etcher . He is best known as a draftsman and engraver of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer's illustrated Bible, for which he made more than 700 preliminary drawings. Johann Melchior was the son of Johann Caspar Füssli and Magdalena Stutz. He learned the art of etching with Johannes Meyer in Zurich and with the electoral court engraver Samuel Blesendorf in Berlin. While still teaching, he worked on a Bible illustration. Between 1709 and 1729 he created numerous New Year's papers for Zurich societies. From 1716 to 1718 he illustrated Johann Jakob Scheuchzer's “Helvetiae historia naturalis” and in 1732 his “Investigations of the Baths in Baden”. His 753 drawings for Scheuchzer's “Physica sacra” (1731–35) are an essential contribution to the scientific book illustration of the Baroque era.
Relationship Network
Parent child
- Johann Caspar Füssli Child
Artworks by this artist (6 total)
- Landscape with Ornamental Frame ca. 1730
- ‘Tempus omnia manifestat’; Allegory of Art and Knowledge 17th century
- The Sacerdotal Atrium in Perspective late 17th–early 18th century ca. 1730
- A Scene of Judgment ca. 1730
- ‘The law of the leper in the day of his cleansing’ ca. 1730
- Rhinoceros in a Landscape within an Ornamental Frame ca. 1730